ntrée Health, the flagship
market access agency
of the Omnicom Health
Group, is dedicated to
helping brands gain profitable market access and to helping patients and providers understand the complexities that come with reimbursement,
executives say, adding that the agency is
driven by the idea that people deserve access to the healthcare they need.

“We believe conversations about accessare fundamental to healthcare decisions,”says Andrew Gottfried, president. “It makesus proud to come to work every day.”According to agency leaders, 2015marked a year of rapid development forEntrée Health Princeton. The standardmetrics, including new account wins, or-ganic growth of in-line business, and ad-ditions to the agency’s headcount were allachieved over the course of the year, exec-utives say, but it was another agency mile-stone that executives call truly formative– and transformative – for the relativelyyoung agency, which opened in 2013.

“Four brand launches in the second
half of the year – that kind of experience
will mature your agency in a hurry,” says
Lauren Walrath, senior VP, client service director.

A new arrival in 2015 herself, Walrath
highlights staffing as a key to the year’s
success. “We were able to call on a combination of veteran staff and new hires
to build the right dynamic across all our
launch teams,” she says.

Jason Dineen, group creative director,
says, “Back-to-back brand launches can
be daunting; we made sure to mix the
hard work with a lot of fun. I’d bet our
teams would be up for it again in 2016.”

Two wins in 2015 grew out of the agency’s
longest-standing client relationship with

AstraZeneca – previous existing business with MedImmune’s FluMist and
Synagis led to work on Lynparza from
AstraZeneca, executives say. In the past
year, the agency built a suite of materials
aimed at securing access and smoothing potential distribution hurdles for the
launches of Iressa and Tagrisso, both
for non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC).

The agency’s approach aims to build
partnerships with clients from the earliest stages of strategic planning, long before tactical projects are initiated, executives say. One such partnership is with
Relypsa, which in late 2015 launched
Veltassa, the first new medication for
hyperkalemia in more than 50 years. A
pre-launch period of market education
and relationship-building was followed
by launch campaigns including value-fo-cused details for payers, hospitals, and
integrated systems, along with journal
advertising.

The launch of Ninlaro, the first oral
proteasome inhibitor for multiple myeloma from Takeda Oncology, involved frequent flights to Cambridge, Mass. “Our
work with Takeda Oncology represents
one of our first wins after we opened the
agency,” Dineen says. “The launch was an
incredibly proud moment for our team.”
The agency created branding for Ninlaro

1Point, the brand’s access and reimbursement hub, supplemented with a training
curriculum for field teams to allow them
to answer providers’ questions about
in-office dispensing, specialty pharmacy
distribution, or Medicare Part D.

For clients at Shire, the agency is currently preparing for an upcoming launch
into the ophthalmology space.

And for all of the aforementioned
brands, according to executives, the
agency also helped to deliver promotions
for access and reimbursement hubs – the
range of patient and provider services
and support that help ensure the right
patients have affordable access to their
medicines.

This increased focus on value echoes a
larger conversation across the industry,
executives say. Working with the U.S.
market access strategy group at new client Sanofi, the agency “worked to think
above-brand, and engage organized
customers as they seek innovative, value-based solutions,” Walrath says.

The agency is also supporting Sanofi
with new training programs, workshops,
and communications that present the full
range of Sanofi capabilities customers
can leverage toward improving population health, executives say.

The agency’s above-brand and brand-ed work both demonstrate core agencystrengths, according to Walrath. “As afull-service access and reimbursementagency, everyone on our team focuses onwhat value means to different and diversestakeholders in the health economy,” shesays. “We use that understanding to buildstrategies and shape communications,campaigns, and programmatic ideasthat help clients succeed in making theirproducts available to patients throughkey channels.”With organized customers across theindustry looking closer at the value ofthe medicines they pay for, the agencyhas expanded the breadth of its expertiseto help clients meet, and lead, conversa-tions about value, executives note.

“We’ve always worked with partner
agencies and public relations firms within the corporate family,” Dineen says.

To those existing relationships, Wal-rath says, “We’ve built competencies viabig data partnerships, and we’ve addedto our bench in the payer strategy depart-ment to strengthen our thinking and ourwork in population health management.”

Executives say learning and development is a priority for the agency, expanding its professional development
offerings to ensure employees are fluent
in the latest market access trends. Additionally, digital capabilities will continue
to be refined with support from iVenturesHealth, the latest offering from The
CDM Group. The agency’s payer strategy
department is growing, to keep pace with
clients’ needs for channel expertise and
insights into payer decision-making.